Across the Plains, by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Plains of Nebraska

It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun rose on Saturday without a cloud. We were at sea —
there is no other adequate expression — on the plains of Nebraska. I made my observatory on the top of a fruit-waggon,
and sat by the hour upon that perch to spy about me, and to spy in vain for something new. It was a world almost
without a feature; an empty sky, an empty earth; front and back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to horizon,
like a cue across a billiard-board; on either hand, the green plain ran till it touched the skirts of heaven. Along the
track innumerable wild sunflowers, no bigger than a crown-piece, bloomed in a continuous flower-bed; grazing beasts
were seen upon the prairie at all degrees of distance and diminution; and now and again we might perceive a few dots
beside the railroad which grew more and more distinct as we drew nearer till they turned into wooden cabins, and then
dwindled and dwindled in our wake until they melted into their surroundings, and we were once more alone upon the
billiard-board. The train toiled over this infinity like a snail; and being the one thing moving, it was wonderful what
huge proportions it began to assume in our regard. It seemed miles in length, and either end of it within but a step of
the horizon. Even my own body or my own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the more
readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in the experience of others. Day and night, above the roar of the
train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers — a noise like the winding up of countless
clocks and watches, which began after a while to seem proper to that land.

To one hurrying through by steam there was a certain exhilaration in this spacious vacancy, this greatness of the
air, this discovery of the whole arch of heaven, this straight, unbroken, prison-line of the horizon. Yet one could not
but reflect upon the weariness of those who passed by there in old days, at the foot’s pace of oxen, painfully urging
their teams, and with no landmark but that unattainable evening sun for which they steered, and which daily fled them
by an equal stride. They had nothing, it would seem, to overtake; nothing by which to reckon their advance; no sight
for repose or for encouragement; but stage after stage, only the dead green waste under foot, and the mocking, fugitive
horizon. But the eye, as I have been told, found differences even here; and at the worst the emigrant came, by
perseverance, to the end of his toil. It is the settlers, after all, at whom we have a right to marvel. Our
consciousness, by which we live, is itself but the creature of variety. Upon what food does it subsist in such a land?
What livelihood can repay a human creature for a life spent in this huge sameness? He is cut off from books, from news,
from company, from all that can relieve existence but the prosecution of his affairs. A sky full of stars is the most
varied spectacle that he can hope. He may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it is as though he had not moved;
twenty, and still he is in the midst of the same great level, and has approached no nearer to the one object within
view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance. We are full at home of the question of agreeable wall-papers,
and wise people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted by sedative surroundings. But what is to be said of the
Nebraskan settler? His is a wall-paper with a vengeance — one quarter of the universe laid bare in all its
gauntness.

His eye must embrace at every glance the whole seeming concave of the visible world; it quails before so vast an
outlook, it is tortured by distance; yet there is no rest or shelter till the man runs into his cabin, and can repose
his sight upon things near at hand. Hence, I am told, a sickness of the vision peculiar to these empty plains.

Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadae, summer and winter, cattle, wife and family, the settler may create a full
and various existence. One person at least I saw upon the plains who seemed in every way superior to her lot. This was
a woman who boarded us at a way station, selling milk. She was largely formed; her features were more than comely; she
had that great rarity — a fine complexion which became her; and her eyes were kind, dark, and steady. She sold milk
with patriarchal grace. There was not a line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice, but spoke of
an entire contentment with her life. It would have been fatuous arrogance to pity such a woman. Yet the place where she
lived was to me almost ghastly. Less than a dozen wooden houses, all of a shape and all nearly of a size, stood planted
along the railway lines. Each stood apart in its own lot. Each opened direct off the billiard-board, as if it were a
billiard-board indeed, and these only models that had been set down upon it ready made. Her own, into which I looked,
was clean but very empty, and showed nothing homelike but the burning fire. This extreme newness, above all in so naked
and flat a country, gives a strong impression of artificiality. With none of the litter and discoloration of human
life; with the paths unworn, and the houses still sweating from the axe, such a settlement as this seems purely scenic.
The mind is loth to accept it for a piece of reality; and it seems incredible that life can go on with so few
properties, or the great child, man, find entertainment in so bare a playroom.

And truly it is as yet an incomplete society in some points; or at least it contained, as I passed through, one
person incompletely civilised. At North Platte, where we supped that evening, one man asked another to pass the
milk-jug. This other was well-dressed and of what we should call a respectable appearance; a darkish man, high spoken,
eating as though he had some usage of society; but he turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary vehemence of
tone —

“There’s a waiter here!” he cried.

“I only asked you to pass the milk,” explained the first.

Here is the retort verbatim —

“Pass! Hell! I’m not paid for that business; the waiter’s paid for it. You should use civility at table, and, by
God, I’ll show you how!”

The other man very wisely made no answer, and the bully went on with his supper as though nothing had occurred. It
pleases me to think that some day soon he will meet with one of his own kidney; and that perhaps both may fall.